by Omer Dostri
Israel will now be able to keep a closer eye on terrorist activity and resume strategic cooperation with moderate Arab states.
The understandings
reached over the Temple Mount compound are nothing new, but they're
important in terms of calming tensions and creating a sense of change.
The fact that Jews can't pray on the Temple Mount is already part of the
status quo agreed upon by Israel and Jordan after the Six-Day War, and
the part about "coordination between the authorities in Israel and the
Jordanian Wakf" is also something that is already taking place.
Israel should welcome
the stipulation about setting up security cameras that will broadcast
24/7 footage of events in the compound, because it represents an
important diplomatic coup (even if Jordanian officials are trying to
make it difficult). This clause, which takes savvy advantage of this
latest crisis to secure an advantage, will allow Israel to track and
oversee terrorist activity from up close and provide the Jordanians and
Sunni Arab nations with proof of it.
Netanyahu wanted to be
rescued from the tricky situation in which Israel found itself, with
moderate Arab nations and the rest of the world criticizing it as the
one violating the status quo, rather than the Palestinian Arabs, whose
extremist religious figures take care to disrupt freedom of worship on
the mount. The international proposals focused on Israel, and heavy
pressure was exerted to exploit the difficult situation and demand that
Israel make concessions, some of which pertained to the matter of
sovereignty itself. Take, for example, the French proposal to place
international observers on the Temple Mount, a move that could nibble
away at Israeli control of the Old City of Jerusalem.
The tension on the
Temple Mount had to come to an end, and fast, even if it was clear to
Israel that the claims of a change to the status quo were false. That's
not only because of the assessment that those baseless rumors were
giving the current wave of terrorism a tailwind, but also because the
strategic and diplomatic danger they posed to Israel. In a debate in the
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee this week, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu explained that cooperation with moderate Arab states
had ground to a halt because of the tension surrounding Al-Aqsa mosque.
That new situation,
created largely because of the Iranian nuclear threat and American
foreign policy swinging away from Israel and the moderate Sunni Arab
states and toward the new Iranian hegemony and growing extremist Shiite
and Sunni Islam -- represented by the Islamic State and Iranian
metastases such as the Houthis in Yemen -- has created an axis that
includes Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf emirates, Egypt, Jordan, and
Israel. This cooperation offers unprecedented strategic opportunities,
and Israel doesn't want to miss them.
The main strategic
cooperation is between Israel and Jordan, who are trying to prevent
Islamic State and other terrorist groups from worming their way into
Jordanian territory, which would endanger both Jordan and Israel. Jordan
has expressed dissatisfaction with what it called "changes to the
status quo [on the Temple Mount]," but King Abdullah understands that
Israel isn't actually making any.
However, even if the
king of Jordan doesn't believe the bold-faced lies of the Palestinian
Arabs, his hands are tied politically and he can't afford to ignore the
simmering hotbed in his own country, whose population is made up
primarily of Palestinian Arabs who might start fanning the flames at any
moment. That explains the king's pressuring Israel to take practical
measures and not stick to declarations. The matter led to a dangerous
estrangement between the two countries, the prime minister said.
Omer Dostri
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=14161
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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